After campaigning, Iltija Mufti turns focus to mother’s biography

“In between, I do get diverted to other tasks like I campaigned (for her mother and the PDP’s ‘blue-eyed boy’ Waheed Ur Rehman Parra). But I will now try to stay on track and hopefully the book should be in print in six to eight months from now,” Ms. Iltija told this correspondent.

Apart from making an aggressive bid for her party candidates, especially her mother, by holding dozens of roadshows and rallies and canvassing door-to-door in Anantnag-Rajouri and Srinagar constituencies, Ms. Iltija remained active on social media platforms to make the political voice of PDP and its leader more popular and reach out to as many netizens particularly the young as possible with her own opinions often seen as being hard-hitting.

36-year-old Ms. Iltija is the 'Media Advisor' to her mother, the assignment she took over last summer to formally take a plunge in active politics. She has also been in-charge of her mother’s social media accounts since 2019. Her own ‘X’ profile mentions her as a ‘Kashmiri’.

Like Abdullahs, the Muftis are being openly criticised by the BJP and its allies for furthering ‘dynastic politics’ in Jammu and Kashmir. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had while campaigning for his party candidates in Jammu alleged that the “political fiefdom” of the Abdullah and Mufti ‘dynasties’ “brought only misery to the people of J&K” in the past.

While responding to the criticism that her entry into politics is actually part of the Muftis agenda to further dynastic politics, Ms. Iltija said, “Should I be ashamed of being Mehboobaji’s daughter and Marhoom (late) Mufti (Muhammad Sayeed) Sahib’s granddaughter. I’m proud of being the daughter of Mehbooba Mufti. BJP can’t and will not decide if I should receive love and respect from the people of Kashmir or not.” She added, “It isn’t the lineage but my aptitude which will decide my fate in politics.”

Asked if it was her own decision or if a publisher asked her to write the biography of her mother, she said, “I’m writing for HarperCollins which is a big publishing house. I gave them a draft which they liked very much”.

She said, “It isn’t a typical biography but a personal political biography-how Mehboobaji went into politics because her life trajectory is very unusual. She is a divorcee…she comes back (to her parents’) home as a divorcee with two minor girls (Iltija and her sister Irtiqa). She goes into politics and makes a name for herself. The publishing house was very much interested in her life story. They told me that they want me to write a biography of Mehboobaji. They asked me to submit a draft and, when I did it, they liked it. I then started writing her biography.”

Q: Are you penning it down dispassionately as an objective and neutral writer or as a daughter who is emotionally attached to her mother and very much part of her life story?

A: It won’t establish my credibility as an author if I write it just in the capacity of my being her daughter. If you have to establish your credibility as an author, you need to be dispassionate to a level. There are some parts of it like when I’m born…obviously the narrative shifts. Otherwise, it is a third person narrator. Most of it is obviously dispassionate from the point of narrative that how the story unfolds. Parts of it are as a daughter. If you continue to talk as a daughter, you are not objective. In fact, even as a daughter when I started the narration, I tried to take not just one but three steps backward to look into and understand her life trajectory; what prompted her to take important decisions in her life.

Q: How difficult is it to write a biography?

A: Very much…and to write a biography is a tall order. I realized it later, yaar where I pushed myself in. It is very difficult because when you write someone’s biography it is not just about the person. For example, when I’m writing the biography of Mehboobaji she is not only a politician, she grew up in Jammu and Kashmir, so you are writing a biography of Jammu and Kashmir also, its culture, its politics…relationship, interpersonal relationship. I have had to do a lot of research. Mehboobaji was the first of many daughters, and she had to bear a lot of pain in the sense that my grandmother was under tremendous pressure (from her in-laws) to have a male child. As the in-laws are like, she was told we want a boy. So, I have tried to bring that angle in it that as a woman what all she had to experience.

Q: How soon will the book be published?

A: In between I do get diverted to other tasks like I campaigned. But I’m hoping the book should be in print in six to eight months from now. End it